by Cam Rogers
“Think about that,” Jack said. “And…”
Paul’s outline flickered, wavered, but not in the way that Shifters spasmed out. This was more of a superimposition.
“… give me…”
The room tunneled and slowed, as a crowd of Paul Serenes—like ghosts, like after-images—stepped, moved, gesticulated, swung, ran …
“… the…”
Not after-images: fore-images. Jack saw his own image dashing out, intersecting with Paul’s. A million potentials exploding from all three men present to form a chaos of moment-to-moment potentiality. Too much to make sense of, so Jack narrowed focus down to what he needed: the device Paul now held.
Ghosts faded. The futures in which he made a play for the Countermeasure solidified. Paul intercepted or avoided him in all of them. In some of them Jack went flying out that breach.
He chose one where he didn’t.
“… Countermeasure.”
He shot forward. Paul wasn’t there. Jack knew where he was, feinted, counted on Paul making a bad choice from the futures he was seeing. Failed.
The game became one of seeing who could see deepest into the mesh of move and countermove and take action accordingly. Jack had far less experience, but Paul was being reassembled from the inside out.
Jack zipped toward him, failed to intercept, feinted, failed, swung for him, failed, outflanked, failed. Paul flashed for the stairwell, Jack moved to intercept, Paul saw it coming and jagged left and swung over the railing. Jack was already there, waiting. Paul swung, Jack grabbed for the Countermeasure, Paul was gone.
“You said we die here?” Jack gasped.
Paul nodded.
“Got a time on that?”
Paul warped forward, bringing down one flash-skinned hand, missing, following through on the momentum, and swinging the Countermeasure like a bowling ball into Jack’s chest. Jack flew six feet and hit the deck hard.
“No!” Will scrambled toward them. “You’ll breach it!”
Paul looked at the device in his hand as though he had never seen it before, an expression of animal confusion on his face.
“Paul?”
He glanced at Will, then, as if hoping to see understanding in another’s eyes. “Wars, calamities, plagues, they were all prices paid to cause and effect, to lead us to this moment.” He slung the silver bullet about his neck, beheld it. “I miss the little things.”
He let it go. Looked away as it fell against his strobing chest.
Paul Serene shuddered, cried out, as the sickness extended farther up his throat, into his skull, and touched his brain.
Jack kicked off against the diagnostics, used what energy he had left to flash the distance between them …
… which Paul countered by warping at him, a half foot to the left, swinging an extended forearm into Jack’s face. Jack went down, and the thing that had been Paul Serene followed up, driving a booted heel downward. Jack flinched aside, the boot cracking the floor near his head, pressed his hands to the floor and …
Paul dropped a knee into Jack’s back. Jack buckled, smashed to the floor, realizing almost immediately that he could feel nothing below his waist.
Paul stepped backward. “You die here so that Monarch can succeed.” He pointed toward the stairwell. One level up, phasing and flickering, was a Shifter. The Shifter. The Shining Palm. “That kills you.” Paul drew out his handgun. “This … here … is the last vision … I ever had.…”
He was almost gone. Shifter Paul clutched for the bullet about his neck, tore it free, focused on it—the reminder he had carried for over twenty years: of friendship, his humanity. A reminder that nothing is to be taken for granted and that time is finite, so better get on living. It seemed to grant him some cohesion, some peace, some focus.
The sickness surged, Paul screamed. Jack pulled his handgun and fired. Agonized howls rolled out of the Shining Palm as potential actions condensed to singular realities, moment to moment, lacerating it. The bullet passed through empty air, sparked off the diagnostics.
“You’re not all gone, are you?”
Paul was by the breach; Jack fired. Retargeted back, fired. The Shining Palm kept screaming, writhing, staggering, and flashing in microbursts down the stairs. Jack dumped his last magazine, tossed the gun aside, rolled.
The Shining Palm flashed across the space.
“You”—Shifter Paul gasped, tearing himself apart through the act of keeping himself together—“waste … time…”
Jack flipped on his back. The Shining Palm reached down and opened its flashing hand toward Jack’s face.
“Not really.” Jack gasped, rolled, flipped to his feet, and cannoned shoulder-first into Paul. The Countermeasure flew free from Paul’s hands. Jack flashed, intercepted it, skidded to a halt, spun toward Paul.
Jack had the Countermeasure.
And realized the Shining Palm was now directly behind him.
Jack had dumped his entire chronon reserve in the warp-fight, and replenished just enough to snatch the Countermeasure from a rapidly deteriorating Paul. Now he was back at zero.
Paul came for him. Jack spun, hand over the Countermeasure’s release.
“I’m pretty sure I can pop this. And I’m pretty sure that if I do it’ll take out you and this thing behind me.” Jack backed up, keeping an eye on both Paul and the Shifter. “Did you see this?” Jack said. “Can you see how this plays out?”
Paul, or whatever was left of Paul, was beyond language. It just held out one hand, reaching for the Countermeasure—a complex mind reduced to the last thing that drove it, perhaps.
The Shifter took one heavy step forward.
“I will do this. Will,” Jack said. “Get behind something.”
The Shifter roared, flexed that open palm, and lumbered straight for Jack—screaming.
Jack spun, Countermeasure extended in both hands, catch ready to pop. “Stop!”
Unexpectedly, the Shifter did exactly that. Its phasing, shining palm hovered two feet from Jack’s face.
It did not move. It only growled, in a thousand voices, and strained its hand toward him.
Beth had done the same thing, in her final moment. “Trust the villain.”
Jack looked. Beneath the distortion, resting within that palm that phased constantly through a thousand variations of itself, one thing remained constant. The flash of light at its center.
A single silver bullet. A reminder to take nothing for granted, that time is finite.
The Shifter made a sound, like a hundred abandoned dogs very far away.
“What…,” Paul croaked, horribly, “are you … doing…?”
The head of the Shifter was a flashing fractal mess. This close to it, Jack could make out the face of the person it used to be. Had always been.
He lowered the Countermeasure, and stood aside.
Paul and the Shifter locked eyes.
The Shifter crossed the space between them with purpose.
Paul, human enough to be panicked beyond reason by this thing he had feared for seventeen years, brought up one useless, shifting hand as the Shifter’s shining palm accepted Paul’s, palm to palm, bullet to bullet, and Paul Serene met the thing he was fated to become, the thing he had always been—four-dimensional—existing at once across all times, midwifing the cause and effect that led to all things being as they are.
Including his own rebirth.
The sickness took him completely, his eyes locked with his Shining Palm self, and in that moment the two became one.
The Shining Palm, existing four-dimensionally, embraced Paul—embraced itself—at the moment of his/its own re/birth.
The Shining Palm had saved him in Monarch Tower. This was the same creature that had tunneled Jack through time, from 2010 to now, thereby ensuring that he would be here. That events would play out as they had.
That Paul Serene would become the Shining Palm.
Paul’s ability to perceive and explore multiple oncoming timelines … all part of
himself becoming four-dimensional. Of growing closer to this thing he was meant to become. Had always been.
Things play out as they must. The universe won’t be bargained with.
Both forms were lost in a corona of light as Paul’s sickness took him completely.
Paul Serene was gone. The Shining Palm remained, but was changed. Uncertain.
Newborn. Flickering, phasing. It looked to Jack, studied itself, at the shining point of reflected light it held in its hand, threw back its head, and …
The stutter broke.
Rain and wind poured into the shattered lab with renewed ferocity.
“Jack!” Will ran across the expanse.
Jack was staring at the spot where his friend had been. “What just happened?”
“I’ll explain later,” Will said, gently taking the Countermeasure. “But if we’re going to do this, it has to happen now. The next stutter that hits may well be the last.”
Underneath the machine, Will decoupled a few fat, insulated wires from each other, using the Countermeasure as a go-between for the chronon flow between core and corridor.
“The Countermeasure is built to brute-force a recalibration of the M-J field,” he said, “resulting in this timeline falling back in synch with itself. If it works we should see an end to the stutters. If that happens it means the field is no longer bleeding out, and universal chronon levels have restabilized.” He made the final connection.
Jack gasped, toppled into the wall of the maintenance loop. Will steadied him.
“It’s coming. A really big one.” Jack held on to his brother, found his feet. “This isn’t going to work if the Countermeasure isn’t charged. Can you show me what to do?”
Will had lived his share of terrible moments, keeping his secrets, sacrificing his life on a long shot that maybe he could save the world. Jack didn’t want to add another, but there was no choice.
Soberly Will pointed to the access hatch, about the size of a fist. “The device is hooked into the machine. I can activate it remotely from the control room upstairs. The depth of the maintenance well and the distance from the machine should protect me from the … effects.”
“You turn it on, I do my thing. Easy.”
Will nodded. “Jack…”
“Beth explained everything. Let’s finish up here, then go get a couple of beers. You and me.”
The two brothers left it at that, Will laying a hand on Jack’s arm before climbing out of the maintenance ring.
The second pre-stutter blasted through Jack. It wasn’t just the world falling to pieces. The next stutter that hit was going to start taking people apart.
“Will? Hurry!”
Twelve different jacks socketed into the core, eliciting a thump and bass hum from the corridor. The machine was online.
Jack held the Countermeasure in both hands, nestled awkwardly amid a tangle of wall wiring. Counted down from three. Thought of Beth.
Catches flipped, the hatch popped open and all the light of heaven spilled out. Jack plunged his hand inside, felt the Countermeasure’s heat penetrate his cells.
Jack poured every particle of energy he had down his arm and into the Countermeasure.
Above him familiar distortion waves were building off the corridor-ring. The light grew brighter. In a room overhead William Joyce flicked a switch, and the corridor-ring activated.
The Countermeasure flared as bright as a sun, and Jack Joyce was lost in light.
23
Monday, 31 October 2016. Riverport, Massachusetts. Twenty-one days after the Riverport disaster.
It says something about the spirit of a town that even after disaster and calamity people take time to celebrate traditions. Though porches and stoops were shattered, lawns piled with gathered rubble and wreckage, jack-o’-lanterns sat on rails and steps, and cardboard witches dangled and turned from eaves. Halloween was a lot more homemade this year, but it felt good. A lot of people had left Riverport after the disaster, or were selling up, but those who remained were coming together as a community in ways that Amy had only ever heard her dad talk about in stories from when he was a kid.
“Riverport, oh Riverport, such a pretty little town.”
Amy looked at the guy sitting on the bench to her left, next to her homemade stand. “You went to Riverport High?”
The man shook his head. “Nah, I’m from Jersey. Just visiting.”
Shaved head, glasses, beard. Layered against the autumn chill in a two-piece suit and wool overcoat, just watching the river. O’Sullivan Park had a good view of the river, and at this time of day it looked like molten silver. From there you could watch crews rebuilding the bridge.
“Speculator, huh?” she said. “Come to see if there’s money in reconstruction?”
The visitor glanced at her. “I ain’t a speculator, sweets. Like I said: just visiting. You really believe that stuff you’re handing out?”
Her card table was stacked with flyers. Postdisaster they’d been a nightmare to get printed, and nobody was taking them. The sign she’d taped to the front of the table read I WAS THERE: MONARCH IS LYING. READ THE TRUTH. The flyers featured the high school photograph of Jack Joyce. FRAMED was stamped over his face in provocative rubber-stamp font.
Amy saw the paper folded in his lap, the one with the same front page as every other paper and Web site for the last few days. Martin Hatch’s face, speculation about October 10, and the news that universities, labs, and agencies the world over were either losing or outsourcing key personnel to Monarch’s new project: the project that was going to save the world.
“You really believe that stuff you’re reading?” She threw his question back at him. He glanced at the paper. “This time last month I’d have thought the Meyer-Joyce field was where the Riverport Little League met on weekends. Then it’s brownouts and blackouts all over, and then there’s all that stuff on the Internet. Real smart people are saying it happened, and real dumb politicians are saying they need more evidence, so…”
“The Peace Movement, man. Four incidents, all those witnesses, all that footage? You don’t fake that.” Amy handed him a flyer. “Read it or don’t. Your call.” She started gathering the stacks, putting them into her backpack.
“‘Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.’ Nice.”
“It’s yours.”
“You givin’ up?”
“I gotta take my neighbor’s kid trick-or-treating.”
“Weird place to be celebrating the night the veil between worlds is thinnest. Who the hell wants ghosts at a time like this?” He stood up. “Nice to meet you.”
Amy kept shoveling pamphlets into her pack. “Sure thing.”
The man turned, crumpled what was in his hand, and tossed it into the trash. Amy’s last year in metaphor, right there. She zipped the bag, folded the table, and headed home. Passing the bench, she glanced in the trash, the bright red of the crumpled paper snagging her curiosity. What he had thrown wasn’t her flyer. It was something else.
Fishing it out and unfolding it she found herself holding a balled-up return ticket to Thailand, made out to someone she knew.
* * *
Main Street and surrounds looked like Kabul with a Starbucks. Gas mains, power lines, infrastructure, cars and trucks, they’d all been fucked up beyond belief. To hear Sofia Amaral explain it, it was areas with densest populations that got it the worst. Something about the web of cause and effect being far thicker and more varied in any location with a lot of people. Those last few stutters had played hell there. The last one especially had gone beyond messing with things and really got to the people. The final hour of the disaster had been a spawning ground for heartbreak and horror stories.
Unexpectedly, sadly, beautifully, that was probably a big part of what was bonding people after the madness: a desire to make amends. Civilized people had lived the alternative, and the value of what they had became crystal clear. The people of Riverport had a cause now, and that cause was, for the time being at least, l
ooking out for each other.
Hazard tape, construction signs, and warnings were taped or lashed across the frontages of more buildings than not. Street corners were piled with brick. Trucks worked twenty-four seven clearing the ruin. Signs were pasted on each block offering rewards for information. Each of those signs displayed two faces: Paul Serene’s, and his own.
Jack adjusted his glasses and kept walking. He walked differently now, purposely, and when he spoke he angled his jaw forward just slightly. This changed his silhouette, it changed his face, it changed how he formed words. Sometimes that was all it took. He’d learned a lot from Beth. The Jersey accent was all her.
The shaved head, glasses, and beard were insurance.
Jack Joyce walked toward Beth’s old house. The neighborhood hadn’t been hit as badly as other places, mainly because it was low density. He stopped on the lawn and picked up the For Sale sign, then unlocked the door.
His phone vibrated, again. He checked it: another message from Will. The twelfth. Same as all the others.
Jack. DON’T. We need to talk about this.
He pocketed the phone, opened the door, and went inside.
From across the street, peering down the gap between two houses, Amy watched him pocket the phone, open the door, and go inside. Locking the door behind himself.
* * *
The house was empty, devoid of life or furniture. The basement was another story.
In the hours after the disaster Jack had taken advantage of the confusion. This is how the basement of that suburban house came to be equipped with a small amount of bleeding-edge chronon-related technology. Just enough to create a small, but very specific, effect.
Sofia Amaral didn’t look up as he came down the steps. “Are you always going to be this relaxed about timetables?”
Jack took off his hat, hooked it on the bannister. “It got sunny.”
Nick was leaning against the wall, seated on a folding chair. “She’s been fretting. Gave me the third degree because it took twenty minutes too long to get Dad back home. He loves watching those Monarch crews build that bridge.”
Half the space was bracketed off by the placement of four pylons: field generators.